


The Fifth Kind

by bevsmrsh



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Bev is “Punk” now, Gen, One-Sided Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, One-sided Bill Denbrough/Beverly Marsh, Stranger Things inspired sort of but not really, Tags will change as fic goes on, i promise Mike will actually be a character later, im a slut for bev in overalls honestly kill me, she fucking loves punk man, there probably won’t be shipping but there might be?, these boys likelike her im sorry I wish I could keep it strictly platonic but I can’t, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bevsmrsh/pseuds/bevsmrsh
Summary: On March 13th, 1997 between the times of 7:30 and 10:30 pm there were hundreds of reported sightings of seemingly extraterrestrial lights floating above the Phoenix, Arizona desert in a V shape. On March 18th, 1997 five teenagers left the town of Derry, Maine in order to discover whatever they can about this strange occurance, bringing supplies for a multi-month journey and enough film equipment for almost a year in their VW bus, they are to come across what they believe to be one of the greatest discoveries known to science and undeniable proof that the Phoenix Lights sightings are not a hoax. They planned to be over-prepared for three weeks of exploration, but return home months later with no recollection of how it took them that long to get back and with a new edition to their group: a girl who seems to defy the laws of human nature.On March 21st, Bill Denbrough, Richie Tozier, Stan Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak, and Ben Hanscom will discover that her eyes are made of fire.





	1. Road trip to nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> You know what there’s not enough of? It themed alien adventures.
> 
> Hi, welcome to a weirdly well researched TedTalk in which I fact checked at least three times on everything to be sure that I can’t be called out for getting my facts wrong.

“My name is Bill Denbrough, it’s 7:18 PM on Tuesday, March 18th, 1997. I’m joined by Stanley Uris, Ben Hanscom, Edward Kaspbrak, and Richard Tozier, we have Mike Hanlon back in our home town of Derry, Maine giving us more information as the case develops. We have been on the road for approximately 11 hours and have gotten most of the way through Pennsylvania.” The camcorder was zoomed out a bit, revealing three teenage boys of varying sizes sitting in the backseats of the van, a VW bus, mildly beat up from age and teal in color — minus the white accents — to be exact, which was also filled to capacity with money, suitcases, bags, drinks, and snacks. The car had been borrowed from Richie’s mom from his grandmother’s “hippie days” back in the 70s. Now, it was being used to help them film what was likely to be the greatest extraterrestrial discovery of all time.

“Exactly five days ago on March 13th, 1997, between 7:30 and 10:30 PM there were a number of reported sightings of strange lights above the Phoenix, Arizona desert. Some photographic evidence of the event has surfaced since then.” Bill held up two printed out black and white photos of a black sky with white spheres in it, the lights being positioned as an arrow lacking a bottom. “We are driving out to Phoenix to try and document any more lights ourselves, and we will be searching for any more conclusive evidence of an extraterrestrial visit.” The camera stopped recording, was turned off, and was carefully put back into the bag it came in before being handed back to Bill. Richie, who had been holding the camcorder, hugged and took a sip from his Coke. “Isn’t this kinda stupid, Bill? We’re driving fifty fucking hours to see some stupid lights that might not even happen again.” But Bill shot back with certainty. “We’re gonna find _something_ , Richie. It doesn’t _have_ to be lights for it to be conclusive. There’s gonna be something out there!”

Eddie snoozed in the very back row of seats, Ben sat next to him playing Pokémon on his Gameboy, Bill was in the row ahead of them with his hand now reaching for his notebook, Richie sat shotgun with his own Gameboy in his hands — though he was more partial to Zelda rather than Pokémon — and Stan sat at the wheel, making a stop at a gas station. Ben decided to pipe up a little too late to be relevant to the conversation. “If nothing else we might find some depressions in the ground.” Richie breathed a laugh and gestured towards Stan. “I’m sitting next to a fucking depression in the ground, Haystack.”

Stan rolled his eyes as he opened his door in order to get gas. “Go back to your playgirls, Richie. The ride was so much more pleasant when you were distracted by dicks.” Where was a slam of the door and Richie let out a little “pshhh,” before opening his own door. “I’m pissing. Care to join me in the bathroom, Benny-boy?” Ben debated, then nodded, climbing out of the car and following behind Richie up to the convenience store. Bill sighed and slumped down into his seat, mildly defeated. This was supposed to be the thing took him seriously about. It was the first summer in which he wasn’t abused by his stutter, the first time he felt he could really stretch his legs in the world without fear of being rejected for his inability to even say his own name coherently. Sure, Richie was joking, but he was probably right. There probably wasn’t anything left in the stupid desert for them to see.

  
Sometimes when they looked at her, her eyes were made of fire that was spreading to her hair and to her freckles and to her hands and to her feet. The creature that implanted itself into the back of her neck, into the back of her brain before she was even born had certain ways of acting out to get what it wanted, and all it wanted right now was it’s freedom. Being set in what was basically a box for months and for years was what angered her more than anything else. She didn’t mind having been taken from her family because she was too young to know anything about them. The only difference between them and the people she was with now was that one was mama and daddy and the other was Ma’am and Sir. There was never a name attached, no extension of emotion, nothing that indicated any connection other than a strict business relationship.

Sometimes when the looked at her, her eyes were made of fire.

  
Bill awoke with a start at 10:52 AM on March 19th. Stan and Richie had switched out positions and now, according to their GPS they had reached Ohio. He wished they were doing a little bit better time, but this would manage. They didn’t necessarily have a deadline to meet, just needing to be back by August 25th, a Monday and the first day of the school year. Eddie had shifted to sit up with him, pointing out possible places to get breakfast. Richie illegally passed over a lane of traffic in order to get to the McDonald’s drive thru. Eddie looked like his head might explode as he told Richie that he wanted a drink and anything that had chicken, because oh boy did Eddie hate eggs from McDonald’s. Richie knew he did so he swayed the woman to get them a chicken salad. The boys in the backseats would continue to be amazed by how people responded positively to Richie, despite the fact that they all wanted to punch him in the face half the time.

After they pulled away with their food and Richie took a sip of his soda, he glanced back at Bill in the rearview mirror. “So Billy, who’s the wet dream about? Anyone I would know?” Bill glanced at Eddie, who shrugged hopelessly, before Richie continued. “You’ve been mumbling about some chick in Arizona for, like, three days. See someone on the news that you like? I mean, I get going the distance to slam, but a cross-country road trip’s a little far, isn’t it?” This was one of the times in which Bill wanted to punch Richie in the face. Luckily, Stan directed their attention away from Richie for just long enough to make up for the feeling. “You need to take the next exit. That’ll take us to Indiana and then it’s a straight-shot through Illinois to Arizona on I-40.”

Eddie looked skeptical. “How do you know so much about geography?” Richie spoke up before Stan could. “Stan’s been training his whole life to go on a mission from God, baby.” Stan slapped Richie’s arm with the back of his hand and held up a map. “I stole this from my dad’s office. I need it more than he does.” Richie gasped. “Stanley! I’m shocked at you! It isn’t in the good Jewish faith to steal from your elders! Have you learned nothing from the Qur’an?” Stan made a ‘ffffff’ noise and rubbed his eyes. “We read the Torah, not the-“ he whipped his head around and raised his eyebrows at the boys in the back seats. “How do you deal with him on a daily basis? I’ve spent 15 hours with him in a car and I’m ready to kill myself.”

Richie laughed, and Bill swore Stan was about to rip the wheel out of his hands and run them into a ditch. “Staaaanieeeeeel, that’s not how the Torah teaches you to speak to people, now is it?” The look of utter blankness in Stan’s eyes just then would have been terrifying if he hadn’t seen it before. He tuned the world out completely and just shut off. A handy trick to learn, self-destruction without the usual meltdown. It was almost pleasant as Stan pulled on his headphones and Richie turned up the radio. This drive was supposed to be 43 hours, but it most definitely was going to feel a lot longer than that.


	2. Lights in the Sky

When Ben turned on the camera and pointed it at Bill, he decided to ignore the fact that the date was off. “My name is Stanley Uris, I am 17 years old, and it is March 21st, 1997. It is 12 PM and we have finally reached Arizona, in about four hours we will be in Phoenix and that is when the real investigation will begin.” The long hours in the van had been frequently accented by sporadic bouts of singing based on the song on the radio, simply because none of them could resist screaming the words to Bohemian Rhapsody or belting out their best rendition of the “bum bUM B U M” in Sweet Caroline, both of which were on one of the cassette tapes from Richie’s collection that rotated in and out of the player.

They’d stop occasionally to get gas and stretch their legs, Stan would point out interesting things around gas stations and truck stops while Richie ran inside and bought a souvenir from every city they stopped in. By the time they passed the state border into Arizona he had created a pretty hefty pile of East Coast-Mid West knick-knacks and shirts that was tucked neatly into the compartments on any of the doors that had them. Eddie slept or played rough games of checkers with Ben and Stan for most of the trip, with Bill switching between navigating, filming, and reading. Richie mostly drove, though sometimes a disastrous game of Uno would happen between the boys in the back and he would usually win out of sheer ruthlessness.

Halfway through one of these games of Uno, Richie announced very loudly: “Bill, don’t cream your tight little pants or anything, but we are officially entering Phoenix, Arizona.” Bill looked up through the front windshield, then whipped his head around to look out the rear window. “Richie, there’s no one behind us for miles. Do me a favor and just back up. I wanna get a shot of the sign.” Richie turned his head slowly, looking at Bill with disgust. “You fucking sociopath, I’m not backing up down a highway in the middle of the desert.” But Bill looked at him with pleading eyes until the car came to a stop and they were rolling back down a dip to see the sign. Richie drove past it again, slowly this time, while Bill filmed, and then Bill turned the camera around to face himself, handing it off to Stan to film.

“It is now 3:35 pm on March 21st, 1997. We have just entered the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Okay, maybe I was wrong about it having happened in exactly the desert, but there is definitely desert surrounding the c-“ with that, the camera died. Stan closed the screen and decided to ignore the date of March 22nd that had been on the screen, fairly certain that the camera was busted anyhow. Bill sighed, having been unable to recharge any of his batteries on the trip. At least now they’d be somewhere that they could do it, despite knowing that they’d just be camping out in the car on the Arizona mountains.

Richie brought the van to a stop on the top of a plateau far from the real city of Phoenix, opening up the back. Everyone began to unload their supplies, pitching the tents and starting a fire, doing everything necessary for a good camping trip. Now, their set up was a little more than thirty-five miles from town give it take a few thousand feet, so they had plenty of space to ignore any of the actual people in town and simply focus on the task at hand, which was to find something interesting and conclusive to bring home. Now Stan would swear up and down that it took them only about an hour to set up the camp if that, so it felt abnormal that the sun was already going down, since it would have only been 4:30, but no one wanted to pass judgment on this odd time and sun shift considering none of them had been this far out of the state before to know if this was normal or not. If it weren’t for his busted watch, Eddie would have told them that it was just nearing 8 o’clock and that it seemed even a little late for the sun to be going down.

This, of course, was all just circumstantial though, because his watch was busted and the date was wrong on the camera and the clock on the van radio hadn’t worked in almost twenty years. This was all normal, a collapse in the fabrics of space and time simply because no one bothered to be prepared to check. This was how things worked in the desert, they were on sand and red clay time, not human time.

The boys had a dinner of hot dogs and chips, listening to the radio as they played Clue under the lights of lanterns they had brought along with them. It was pleasant and they had plenty of cooked food to spare, which was set inside the van for the morning next to Eddie who was curled up and asleep in the backseat, having been worried about snakes and scorpions crawling on him if he were to sleep on the dusty desert floor.

It was 11:43 pm when he saw her. At first, Eddie had only assumed it was Richie snacking on their leftovers in the middle of the night, but then he realized that there was not a black hair on the body in front of him, strictly red. Her eyes were blue, but he swore when she looked up at him they were bright red, the dying fire around his friends glinting off of them. Eddie and the girl stared at each other for a few seconds before anything set in and suddenly Eddie was screaming and the girl was shaking her head very aggressively, climbing over the seat to press her hand to his mouth, trying to quiet him down. The door was bum rushed by other boys and she looked over at them, her appearance ragged, eyes wide and frightened. She had a hospital tag around her wrist and clothes that were too big, clothes that were stolen.

“Great. Eddie’s losing his virginity to Squeaky fucking Fromme.” Richie announced, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m going back to bed.” He disappeared back into their tent and zipped it closed. What a great help he was being. Bill shook his head at Richie and leaned into the van, hoping to coax this weird and potentially dangerous girl away from Eddie. “Hi, I’m Bill. That’s Eddie, Stan, Ben, and Richie just left. Um- who are you?”

The girl carefully pulled her hand away from Eddie’s mouth, thinking it was safe that he wouldn’t scream again now that the others were here. And he wouldn’t. She shrugged, liking the name that she had been called before but not really knowing what else to say. Bill nodded solemnly. “Great, okay, why are you here?” He spoke slowly to her, like she might not understand. “I’m... I had to leave. I was being chased? Chased! The lights? They’re for me. Y’know, the lights?” She pointed upwards and Bill nodded, glancing back at Stan who stared skeptically at her. “Chased by who?” Ben asked, peaking up from the back of the group. “People. Bad people. Bad people. But I’m here now and they’re not. That’s good. I can sleep here, right?”

Eddie shook his head aggressively no but the other three all agreed that it would probably be okay. Just for the night at least. She looked like she needed help, and Stan’s weird sense of scouts honor mixed with Bill’s need to lead and Ben’s empathy led to their decision. Bill spoke for the group. “Yeah, yeah you can sleep here. But not... in here. You can sleep in the tent with us.” She glanced out the window at the tent and debated this, shrugging and nodding before getting their help in stepping out of the van. As Ben unzipped the tent, she turned to Bill and stuck a finger against his chest. “If anything... weird happens, remember that I will kill you first.” Bill slowed for a moment before just nodding, waving her into the tent. “Nothing weird is gonna happen. Not again tonight anyways.”

The adjustment of Stan and Bill sharing a sleeping bag was made so that she could have her own, curled up against the wall of the tent to sleep, waking up before any of them and laying on the roof of the van, staring up, pointing to the fire as they exited the tent. “I fixed it for you. It was dead when I got up and it shouldn’t be dead. Not when you’re out here.” They all stepped hesitantly around her as they took their seats at the fire, other than Richie who thought nothing of the situation. “Why aren’t you concerned about a possibly feral girl showing up at our campsite in the middle of the night?” Stan asked, and Richie smiled. “‘Cause Squeaky wasn’t at any of the murders. Besides, we’re in coyote country. A 5’ flower child is the least of our fucking worries.”


	3. I Bless the Rains Down in Arizona

It seemed that strange occurrences followed this strange girl — who Richie had begun to call Squeaky for simplicity and his odd knowledge of true crime — no matter what she did. As Bill busied himself with fixing a tear in the tent and Eddie and Stan had gone off to town in order to buy a new sleeping bag. Ben admired how Richie and the girl sat together on the van’s roof listening as Richie blasted his Ziggy Stardust tape. She laughed weird, like she didn’t know how to laugh, she pounded her feet and shook her arms and had a wide-mouthed open smile.

Once Richie climbed off the car and went inside, pulling out his radio rather than running out of power on the car. He put on music, but it went out so he settled for a Nirvana tape. He was still a little hurt that Kurt Cobain died — Courtney Love killed him and Richie Tozier would rather die than believe otherwise. The girl swung her legs over the side of the van and announced loudly “I want it to rain,” very loudly. Bill swung around and commented “no rain out here,” but that didn’t seem to phase her. She wore some of Eddie’s clothes because they were basically the same size, shorts and a shirt with words she didn’t understand on it. Richie had helped her roll up the sleeves and Bill had given her his windbreaker, which was entirely too large on her and was worn more like a dress.

She tossed herself from the van and landed in the sand, waving her arms around to keep balance. Everything she did had the same recklessness as her laugh, like no one had ever taught her what girls are supposed to be like. “So Squeaks,” Richie began, and that got her attention. Her feet stayed planted in the sand but the rest of her turned completely to face him. “Yuh-huh?” He thought of the wording of his question carefully before asking. “What’re you tryna do after this? ‘Cause we gotta get home... soon.” She smiled and stood normally, she still didn’t have shoes and he wasn’t sure how she wasn’t burning alive or overheating with the jacket and climbing on burning metal.

“I’m going with you! You said I can sleep with you if I wanted to, and that I shouldn’t tell everyone else that you said that because it’s supposed to just be our secret. And you’re going up! I wanna go up too, it’s colder there, isn’t it? I wish it was colder here. I think my family is up-up-up like yours too, so I can see them.” Richie looked a little hesitant to nod, but eventually he did. It seemed like a solid enough plan, he supposed. And he liked her, so it wouldn’t be unbearable to go home with her. “Your parents live in Maine? What’re you doing all the way out here then?” Bill asked as he climbed out of the tent, wiping the nothingness off his hands to indicate that he had finished fixing the tent.

“Oh well... I don’t know if that’s where they are. I think that’s where they are, I feel like it’s the only thing I can remember about them. But I already told you! I’m being chased, remember? I never got to know my family for very long before they took me.” She shrugged, dredging through the sand over to Bill, using her fists to bounce herself off of his chest. “Wait you were... actually taken from your family?” She nodded and he instantly began racking his brain for any missing persons signs or reports he had heard about. The only one that really stood out to him was the four year old that went missing a few years ago, but that’s just because his mother had brought it up in context of his father saying his little brother could play outside. “It’s big dangerous world out there, Zack! You can’t just send our children into the wild alone and expect them to come back!”

“Why’d you get taken?” She laughed loudly and stopped bouncing. “I already told you! The lights were for me! I’m one of them and that’s why they wanted me, because I’m not a person like you’re a person. They said I’m a ‘humanoid extra terrestrial being’ whatever that means.” Richie and Bill exchanged looks, then both glanced to Ben who looked just as confused as them.

“Do you want me to show you? I can show you.” Richie nodded to the extreme. “Uh, fuckin’ duh I wanna see!” She smiled and looked around the campsite, grabbing a number of nasty smelling green glass bottles Richie had been drinking from. She set them up in a line on the sand and the boys gathered around. She lowered her head slightly, putting out a hand and narrowing her eyes, her fingers flexing. The bottles burst into thousands of tiny shards before their eyes and Richie couldn’t help but hit Bill on the arm with a soft “holy shit.”

They set up more bottles, and then had it escalate to lifting the van. Bill and Ben climbed inside with Richie watching from behind the tent, not wanting to possibly be killed by a trick gone wrong. She had to take her time on this one, still only using one hand though. Sand fell off of the tires as the van rose higher and higher, nearly twenty feet in the air now. That’s when Richie ran out from behind the tent and grabbed her in a celebratory way, but it made her drop her hand.

Ben went tumbling out of the open van door and Bill barely hung on as she put out both hands, catching Ben mid-fall and catching the van just before it hit the ground, setting both down carefully before the blood rolled out of her nose and she collapsed onto the sand.

She was still out when Stan and Eddie came back, both concerned by the worried looks on their friends faces. “Hi, what the fuck happened?” Eddie asked as he set down the bags he carried. Bill looked up from the fire and found himself surprised that they had returned. “She’s fucking crazy.” Richie spoke before he could. “She can, like, she can blow shit up with her mind and she lifted the van in the air and then she just fucking passed out.”

During dinner, she emerged from the backseat of the van, holding onto the side, dried blood smeared across her lip. “You guy’s missed it, I completely wrecked your van and almost killed Ben.” She was definitely picking up vocabulary cues from Richie, who sat proudly on his spot and made room for her next to him. He was still the only one that wasn’t at all scared of or intimidated by her. It was a little sad really, she was harmless after all. “Oh. And we should leave. If they get any idea that I’m out here they’ll come for me and kill all of you.” She nodded, like this was no big deal.

“You... you did something that would make them find you?” Stan asked, and she nodded. “Richie wanted me to.” Stan drew in a breath. “Then we should leave.”

“But-“ Bill started, but Stan gestured to the girl. “Look at her! She’s enough evidence for your stupid movie, Bill! It’s dangerous to stay out here!” There was no debate to be put up against the argument. Everything was packed into the van, which means the tent and sleeping bags were shoved into the back, and Stan began the drive out of the desert. It had been a good few days, and they had a new member of the group.

“You excited to go home, Squeaks?” Richie asked, turning his head from the passengers seat to look at her. She shrugged. “I guess so. It’s better than the block.” Richie nodded and turned around again, turning on the radio and closing his eyes as they ran over the now-dead fire. “They’re gonna be happy to see you.”


	4. on the road again

The girl slept the way a dog sleeps when it’s having a dream, with shaking hands and twitching muscles. Her legs were curled to her chest and she laid her head against Bill’s shoulder, whispering and mumbling occasionally. Multiple she would convulse in growing strength before waking up, touching Bill’s cheek with her soft fingertips, then go back to sleep. He thought it was probably just to make sure she was awake and to ground herself in reality.

When they hit the ten hour mark of driving, they stopped for the night at a truck stop and she was the first one out the door, having climbed over Bill and rolled out onto the asphalt. “Bill... Bill feed me... I need to be fed I’m dyyyyiiiinnnngg.” She flopped around on the ground like a dead fish until he climbed out of the car and forced her to her feet, giving her his jacket again, he wrapped an arm around her and lead her inside. She seemed amazed by the largeness of everything and the amount of people. They got the largest order of chicken nuggets they could manage and she had Dr. Pepper for the first time, trying it and instantly looking slightly disgusted, grabbing his arm and tilting her head. “Why do they make this?”

Ben, who had been called inside by her at Bill’s request to help carry bags, stared longingly at the way she grabbed Bill’s arm and laughed at the commercials playing on loop inside. They had just set the last of their bags down on the floor of the van when Stan jogged back to them, having been standing at the payphone. “Her name’s Beverly. Beverly Marsh.”

Richie, who had just shoved a fist-full of fries into his mouth, raised an unsure eyebrow. “I get you have a thing for California, Stanny, but giving desert girls names is a little weird.”

“No! I mean the girl who went missing when we were all kids! Her name was Beverly Marsh! She is Beverly Marsh! I called Mike and he looked into it for me, I knew she was familiar!”

An uneasy look set over Bill’s face as he yanked Stan away, whispering to him with a great sense of aggression. “Like Beverly who went missing from her bed twelve years ago Beverly?”

“Strangely enough, I don’t think any other Beverly’s have gone missing since then.”

“Her dad killed her mom.”

“Yep.”

“And they thought he killed her too.”

“Sounds correct.”

“Can we take her home?”

“Well I’m not letting her stay with any of us.”

“Stan!”

“Bill, she’s dangerous. It’s not like you’re in love with her and have known her your whole life and I’m pretty sure Richie just wants to sleep with her. It’s a no-go. No one gets to keep her. She needs to be with her dad.”

“But Stan-“

“We’re taking her home and we’re not including her on your movie. I don’t want her return to get anymore attention than it needs to.”

“She’s not dangerous.”

“Why do you care so much about her suddenly? Is it because she’s the first girl to ever show the slightest sign of affection towards you? Is it because this is your summer of being brave? You can’t make stupid decisions when it comes to this kind of shit, Bill. This is a highly dangerous possibly extraterrestrial teenage girl with raging hormones and a sociopath for a father. This isn’t your time to be a fucking lover-boy hero. We’re taking her home and that’s it. Grow the fuck up. I’m sure you’ll get to see her around town.” With those final words, Stan stormed inside of the truck-stop and Bill could only watch as the automatic doors closed behind him.

When he looked back at the van, Richie and Eddie were speaking softly to one another in the very back seat while shoveling fries into their mouths and Ben sat with Beverly. They both looked up at him with the same soft round eyes and childish faces, and he could see the twinge of a smile on Beverly’s face.

“So uh- when we get back to Derry, we’re gonna set you up with your dad. We’ll see you at school and around town and stuff but you’re not gonna be able to stay with us.” The smile grew slightly and it made him smile before she was looking at Ben.

“What’s school?” Bill decided to take a seat, making it so that she sat between the two as Ben began to explain it to her.

“It’s like... this big building where adults teach you stuff and people can be kinda mean a lot but it’s worth going to so that you can be successful later.” Beverly nodded, the more he thought about the name the more he liked the way it felt on her.

The way the corners of Ben’s eyes crinkled and how his eyes sparkled, their soft brown color reflecting off the blue of hers — her eyes were practically glowing in the twilight of the parking lot — made Bill feel a warmth in his chest. He could tell that Ben clearly already liked her a lot, despite how distant his admiration has been so far.

“In Derry,” her simple expression drifted over to Bill as he spoke to her now. “We have this thing called the Quarry. It’s basically this giant lake and the only way to really get down to it is to jump off this cliff from way high up. You’d probably really like it. And around that is the Barrens and that’s basically just this huge forest that everyone dumps the shit they don’t want in.”

“I think I’m gonna like Derry.” Bev gave a nod in confirmation with her own statement and he could see just over her head that Ben’s eyes flickered through the wisps of red in order to gaze at her better.

“I think you’re gonna like it too.”

Just as the tender moment had begun to proceed into further conversation caused by Beverly opening her mouth in a way that was strictly going to be dictated towards Bill, Richie decided to cut in. Bill very much wanted to punch him in his stupid glasses wearing face right now, but he didn’t, because Bill is civil. Besides, it lightened up the lovesick look on Ben’s face to hear someone else speak.

“Okay so if you guys are done living in your sappy romcom, it’s our turn with Bev.” He gestured to Eddie and himself, who nodded along. Bill pressed his tongue to his cheek and closed his eyes momentarily before climbing out of the van.

“Sounds good. What’re you guys gonna do?”

“There’s a gift shop in there, we’re gonna give her a makeover.”

Before Bill could even protest to the idea, Eddie had dashed off to the truck-stop and Richie was pushing Bev out of the van with ease. “We’ll be back in twenty minutes.” Richie winked at Bill and his body was exchanged for Stan’s, who had just exited the building and made it back to the van.

“Before you say anything I already gave them permission to do it. She looks like a fucking mess.”

“She was walking around the desert for multiple days.” Ben chimed in, and Stan shot him a look that held only anger.

The boys in the car closed their eyes and listened to the radio for the remainder of their time waiting, only to be presented with “the new and improved Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak approved Beverly Marsh!” Eddie made little crowd cheering noises with his hands cupped around his mouth as Beverly stepped out from behind Richie.

“Y-your hair.” Was the first thing to come out of Bill’s mouth upon seeing her. What before had been messy and dirty and long was now cut short and newly washed, the red really coming out without all the dust, her waves and tangles turned into curls.

“Your hair looks beautiful, Beverly.” Ben pulled the words from the air and Bev looked to Eddie for confirmation, who nodded before she smiled.

“Thank you. It’s a lot... better now. I think.” The clothes she had been wearing were replaced by a ROSWELL NEW MEXICO shirt, a pair of soft looking green overall shorts, and brown boots that very well could have been doc martens.

“How the fuck did you get all of that?” Stan asked from the drivers seat, Richie looked excited as Eddie explained the situation.

“There was a girl in there and we paid her, like, 100 bucks for her shoes and overalls and she was like ‘fuck it yeah sure’ and just handed them over!”

“New Mexico is a weird place.” Richie nodded towards Bill, who jokingly rolled his eyes. “Okay, lets go. I wanna get home ASAP.”

Richie climbed into the passengers seat and Eddie went to the very back next to Ben while Beverly got in again next to him, shutting the door behind her and taking a seat. She pulled his windbreaker on and listened intently as Ben explained how to use a Gameboy while leaning over the seats.

Maybe Stan was right, maybe she was dangerous, but that didn’t mean they had to stop seeing her right when they got home. They had just reached Arkansas when the sun came up and that’s when he realized that none of them had slept that night. It was an odd feeling, to know that not a single person had gotten to fully rest their eyes as they drove, it was almost numbing to think about how lined up their sleeping schedules were anymore. There had been a long time of silence other than the radio, but as they all expected Richie was the one to break the silence.

Bill hadn’t realized the way his arm was thrown across the connected seats and the way his fingers lingered on Bev’s shoulder until Richie made him aware that he was alive again.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without coffee before and there’s a Starbucks up on the right so I mean.”

“I’m stopping immediately and you can all kill me before you complain about a detour.” Stan announced, pulling into the turn lane and quickly getting into the parking lot. The whole group climbed out and Beverly, having never seen so many moving cars in one place before, reached out and held both Bill and Ben’s hands, finding a sense of security in them as they entered.

Richie ordered everyone’s drinks and picked his personal favorite for Bev as well, first having let her take a sip of his and suddenly finding that she wouldn’t give it back so he was forced to buy himself another. How easily “venti caramel frap with light ice extra caramel and extra whip” flew off of Richie’s tongue made Stan’s eyes practically roll back into his head, but he would never say that of course.

Eddie had gone to the bathroom and when he came back, he leaned across the counter with a drawn back look on his face. “Sorry to ask but um... is your calendar correct?” The girl smiled and nodded at him. “We change it everyday.” He drew in a breath and twitched a smile at her before pulling Bill aside.

“What day is it?”

“It’s the 25th, why? What’s wrong?”

“Bill, it’s August 13th.”


	5. How to Talk to Girls at Parties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m in hell
> 
>  
> 
> Also come 4 me I’m allowed to write Audra how I want

“That’s impossible though!” Richie announced, arms crossed, back pressed leisurely against the door of the van.

“Oh it’s very possible. We’re traveling with a dangerous thing that’s probably not from our dimension and is probably altering the fabrics of time and space.” Stan shrugged, sipping his drink and glancing over at Bill.

“Could you stop saying she’s dangerous? She’s not fucking dangerous. Look at her!” Richie stuck out his arm and gestured towards Bev, who was currently getting a skateboarding lesson from a boy who had rode up to the coffee place.

“Why are you trying to defend her all the time?” Stan rolled his eyes and stared at Richie.

“Because she’s my friend? Because she’s a girl we found walking around the fucking desert who has no one else? Because she might die?”

“Why would she die?” Ben asked from his place inside the van.

“Well, again, she’s been in the desert and she’s not fully human so we don’t really know how she’s gonna react to Derry. It’s August now so it’s gonna be fucking cold.”

“The desert gets cold, Richie.” It looked like Stan’s eyes might roll all the way back into his head.

Ben looked over at Bev, who was smiling and pointing at their group while she held the skateboard boy’s arm. She and the boy walked across the parking lot together, her being on his board, him pulling her along.

“Hey.” Skateboard boy spoke in short sentence fragments.

“Hi?” Bill tended to speak in short sentence fragments when he didn’t know people.

“She y’girlfriend?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not at all.” Stan interjected, quickly looking at skateboard boy.

“Good. I wanna take her to a party.”

“I’ve never been to a party and he said it would a lot of fun and that we could drink together! It’s very exciting. I want to go. Bill, let me go.” It seemed that Beverly was unable to speak in short sentences.

“Can we talk in private?” Skateboard boy nodded and stepped away, walking inside the Starbucks.

“Do you know what a party is?” Richie asked from inside the van, and when Bev shook her head no he smiled. “We should let her go.”

“We’re not letting her go.” Bill flared at Richie, looking for answers.

“Billy! Look at her! She’s fucking hot, dude! She’s gonna get invited to all kinds of shit in Derry and she needs to be prepared for it! She’s probably older than you! You can’t baby her!”

“When’s your birthday?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Exactly! She’s not ready!”

Eddie frowned. “I mean, why isn’t she? I’ve never been to a party.”

“You’ve been to a school before. She got overwhelmed on the highway.”

“Stan gets overwhelmed on the highway and he’s the one driving.”

Bill took a deep breath, then extended his hands, shaking his head. “Fine. Okay. I give up. Yes, we can go to a party.”

Bev gasped and hugged Bill immediately, pure joy on her face. “Yes! We can go to the party!” Before he could hug her back, she was already running inside and grabbing skateboard boy, who smiled only slightly.

Bill did not like this at all.

  
The concept of a party excited Bev the way croissants for breakfast excite Eddie. Completely and entirely. She was practically hopping around while they got ready, Eddie having bought cheap makeup from Walmart and Richie helping Bev put it on — he learned from his sister dressing him up all the time when they were kids. Eddie had insisted that they give her the full party experience, so they also bought her a dress to wear. It was weird to see Richie be so brotherly.

Stan drove them to The Party and they poured out of the car, Bev taking a quick look around before walking very sternly inside. It took a little longer for everyone else to follow, but eventually they did.

An Arkansas Punk Party was not at all like a Maine Punk Party.

These kids were not California Punk but they had a level of genuine grunge to them that made Eddie sort of feel like he was going to be hurt if he acted like he didn’t like the music. It was as if a Nirvana album threw up and this was what came out.

There was more leather and fishnet in the room than at a Sex Pistols concert, and it was slightly scary. A girl with a half-shaved Head was staring at Richie like he was a hunk of meat and Bill busied himself by trailing off from the group, following the sound of loud reckless laughter, knowing it could only belong to one person.

Sitting crisscrossed on a kitchen table across from Skateboard Boy was Beverly, wearing the boys jacket — denim, too big, and covered in patches and pins. She smiled and was attempting to smoke a cigarette upon the boy’s direction. She seemed like she was having a great time and really he only found it annoying because Stan was right, she was so extremely happy to be here. He hated it when Stan was right about things. The thing was though, she was holding the cigarette wrong and Skateboard Boy wasn’t telling her she was wrong. It felt like there was supposed to be a metaphor there, but he didn’t want to know.

Soon after arriving in the room, Bill was slipping out to return to the actual party, not the odd quietness of the kitchen. Skateboard Boy had the same open mouth laugh that she did. He did not look at her strangely the way they all had.

A girl bumped into him as he was leaving the kitchen and when he looked at her, she looked back, and she didn’t look especially sorry for bumping into him. She looked mildly out of place, she did not scream Grunge at him, she spoke softly and in long eloquent paragraphs, despite that only “sorry,” came out of her mouth. Bill didn’t stop staring, and neither did she. Her shoulders slumped forward when she stood and she had the face of a woman who could be in movies, she looked a little bit like Beverly. She forced her hand against his in order to shake them. “Hi. I’m Audra.”

  
Audra Phillips talked the way listening to the entirety of Surrealistic Pillow in one sitting felt. She had so much passion about so many things, but she was extremely stoic; she’d shrug and take a sip from the solo cup in her hand while they spoke on the steps of the back porch. She had a rich family and they lived a few miles away, she was here with her friend Patty who liked boys but didn’t know how to talk to them, and her favorite color is red — not bright red, like dark red. Like maroon.

  
Patty liked to talk. A lot. She just wasn’t very good at it. Her hands would flutter a little too much and she looked completely flustered, but she was cute and funny and felt better when she got to hold Stan’s hand because there was a group of people outside smoking pot and it made her panic. She was Jewish and not very witty, but she laughed at his observations from their place on a worn-down floral couch.

  
Myra made Eddie feel small and uncomfortable. She was chubby and exactly like his mother in every way imaginable. She had bad eyeliner and big dairy cow eyes and she was sitting too close to him. He watched with genuine horror as Ben was grabbed by two girls and pulled up a set of stairs without protest. Myra tried to take his hand and he panicked, standing up quickly and walking down into the basement.

  
Skateboard Boy told Bev that his name is Tom Rogan and she said that she liked that name a lot. She said she wanted to show him something extraordinary and he said okay so she grabbed his face and kissed him.

Suddenly they were not on a table in a kitchen in a house in Arkansas, they were made of fireworks that were exploding spontaneously. Light was burning hot and there were thousands of colors never seen before. It was a ball of fire, and then it was an ocean and then it was a planet and then the planet caught fire again before exploding. A never-ending chain reaction of bright lights imploding went off in front of them before their eyes opened, and just as suddenly they were back on a table in a kitchen in a house in Arkansas.

“That’s where I’m from.” She smiled and spoke with constantly moving eyebrows, and Tom smiled back.

“You’re fucking insane, Bev.” He kissed her again and she wasn’t sure if she liked how he kissed her.

  
Richie, shockingly, was the only one of the group who wasn’t inebriated so he was elected to drive them to their motel — they couldn’t afford anything nicer than that. There they were, two queen size beds for five boys and one girl who were average size or slightly larger. They were literally stacked on top of each other, Ben ended up on the floor at some point too.

Richie woke up first, leaving for a coffee run and returning to see Bev awake, sitting against one of the beds wearing the shirt she had been given by Tom. When he came inside she smiled and took coffee from him, yawning, drinking, looking absent.

“Did you have a very Punk time?” He was fairly certain Tom’s friends had said the word to her too many times last night and now she didn’t know what it meant.

“It was kinda lame, actually. I just sat outside and smoked mostly.”

“That’s not very Punk of you, Richie.”

“I don’t believe in Mainstream Punk Capitalism.”

“Very anti-establishment. Punk.”

Bill groaned and threw one of the pillows beneath him at Richie. “Could you shut the fuck up? We’re all sleeping.”

“I brought Eds coffee!”

Ben rolled over on the floor and Bev grabbed his ankle, shaking it and trying to wake him up.

“Bev please.”

She frowned, looking at the cabinets beneath the tv on the wall and concentrating. Soon enough, all of the drawers and cabinets in the room were opening and closing rapidly, making an annoyingly loud noise. Pretty soon, everyone in the room was waking up, startled, and she quickly stopped the noise when Richie threw the pillow at her.

  
It didn’t take long for all of them to get moving. They were piled into the car and speeding down the highway, most of them were just recovering from very bad highs, but Stan had a “very Punk” hangover so Richie had to drive. Bev sat in the passengers seat and continued to not at all understand the idea of safety.

  
It took two days, but eventually the _Welcome To Derry, Maine!_ came to pass. Upon seeing the sign, everyone seemed to sit up a little bit straighter. They drove down to get Mike, who met them at the rode and hugged all of them individually, stopping to make far away eye contact before she leaned out of the car and shook his hand aggressively. “Beverly Marsh.”

Mike nodded slowly, then looked to Stan. “I called her dad. He said that it’s bullshit. He’s off work today.”

Richie smiled only slightly. “Sounds like we’re having a family reunion.”


End file.
